Tag: Canada

Just in time for the beginning of the best weather to travel north, is our Geocache of the Week GC5803. The geocache titled, “As North As It Gets!” takes you up to N. 82 degrees.

Besides the wolf above, cachers who’ve logged GC5803 say you’ll also be walking among foxes, lemmings and even polar bears. The cache is just outside what’s reported to be the northernmost permanently inhabited place on earth: Alert, Canada. The Canadian Air Force staffs a station there. Temperatures in Alert average about -30 degrees Celsius most of the year.

Now is the perfect opportunity to plan your northern caching adventure. July is typically the warmest month. The snow melts to reveal a rocky terrain of jagged shale. Temperatures average a scorching six degrees Celsius (42 Fahrenheit). You could be among the nearly two dozen geocachers to earn a smiley for logging this cache and take away memories of a rarely visited northern landscape.

View from near the GC5803

What to explore more geocaching adventures? Take a look at all the Geocaches of the Week here.

Geocaching squares off again the battle of the bulge. Geocacher Martin Pedersen is on a diet. Martin is determined to lose 100 pounds by the end of the year. He’s using geocaching to shed the weight. His aim is to find 1000 geocaches and walk 2500 kilometers. Root him on by posting a comment and sharing your geocaching weight lose stories here on our blog. You can also track his progress and send well wishes his way on his must-read family website, http://familynavigation.com

Okay. So, this will all come together, promise. A children’s story by Lewis Carroll came to life again earlier this year. The latest incarnation of Alice in Wonderland includes the standards like talking animals; cats, rabbits and caterpillars galore.

But agree or not, the story’s leading lady Alice is a geocaching pioneer. The adventure seeker finds a rabbit hole (read: geocache)… and slips into another world (read: geocaching enthusiast). Sure, Alice is in 3D and there’s the whole Johnny Depp situation, but really, a stretch? I don’t think so.

Remember your first geocache? Whether you’ve found ten more, a hundred more or a thousand more, you’ve entered a new world, slipped down the proverbial rabbit hole. Hopefully in your new world the animals don’t talk so much (read: seek help if they do).

Here’s a tip though, if you’re up for a little adventure that is. The real rabbit hole (which still exists) is surrounded by at least 16 geocaches. But no one’s tagged the original rabbit hole… yet. Is your GPS handy? How’s N 51° 45.115 W 001° 15.489 sound?

Okay, a little admission, placing a geocache here might be illegal and/or unethical. According to Carroll, who died in 1898, the “rabbit hole” is a staircase inside Christ Church in Oxford, England.

The coordinates I gave you are actually across the street. Check out this link. And finding this magnetic micro cache isn’t easy – but adventure isn’t for the faint of heart and neither is falling down rabbit holes.

What are your favorite literary caches? Was Alice a geocaching pioneer?